“Yes, I see a reason for your concern now. I will put out a missing-persons report forthwith.”

I sighed heavily, then went upstairs and talked to the kids and Nana. I tried my best not to alarm them, but Damon and Jannie started to cry. And then Nana did, too.

We had learned nothing more about Christine or her whereabouts by midnight. Inspector Busby left the hotel at quarter past twelve. He was kind, actually, and considerate enough to give me his home number; he asked me to call right away if I heard from Christine. Then he said my family and I would be in his prayers.

At three, I was still up and pacing my hotel room on the third floor, and doing some praying myself. I had just gotten off the phone with Quantico. The FBI was cross-checking all of my homicide cases to see if anyone I’d investigated had any connection with Bermuda. The Bureau was now concentrating on the current series of unsolved murders in Southeast. I’d faxed them my profile on the Weasel.

I didn’t have any logical reason to suspect that the killer might be here in Bermuda, and yet I feared he might be. It was just the kind of feeling that The Jefe had been rejecting about the murders in Southeast.

I understood that the Bureau probably wouldn’t get back to me until later in the morning. I was tempted to call friends at Interpol, but I held off?. And then I called Interpol, too.

The hotel room was filled with mahogany Queen Anne furniture and wicker, and had dusty-pink carpets. It seemed empty and lonely. I stood like a ghost before the tall, water-stained dormer windows, stared out at the shifting black shapes against the moonlit sky, and remembered how I held Christine in my arms. I felt incredibly helpless and alone without her. I also couldn’t believe this had happened.

I hugged myself tightly and became aware of a terrible pain all around my heart. The tightening pain was like a solid column that went from my chest all the way up into my head. I could see her face, her beautiful smile. I remembered dancing with her one night at the Rainbow Room in New York, and dinners at Kinkead’s in Washington, and that one special night at her place when we’d laughed and thought maybe we’d made a baby. Was Christine out there somewhere on the island? She had to be. I prayed again that she was safe. She had to be safe. I refused to have any other thought for more than a couple of seconds.

The telephone in the room rang, a short burst, at a little past four in the morning.